Transcripts For DW Tomorrow Today - The Science Magazine 201

DW Tomorrow Today - The Science Magazine January 15, 2018

A digital scan of forests. In the art of modern architecture delicate structures made from reinforced concrete and fiberglass that are incredibly stable with a little help from nature researchers are now developing a range of high tech materials with some amazing characteristics. This is the inspiration for what could be the super material of the future. Spider so this researchers all wrapped up its stronger than steel yet more flexible than rubber natures High Performance raw material but obtaining the silk directly from spiders is difficult even in tiny amounts it could never be profitable. At the university of by right in southern germany thoma scheibel has been researching potential industrial applications for a super silk. Weve made some decisive breakthroughs first we managed to recreate the raw material both in terms of mechanical properties and scalability that means it could be made on an industrial scale second we made the thread and not just any threat we made thread the way spiders make it with all the properties it has in nature or maybe even slightly better ones. Scheibel develop the process using gut bacteria that have been genetically modified to produce silk proteins the silk is spun out of this proof. That happens when a phosphate compound is added it causes the thread in the protein secreted by the bacteria to solidify the end product is artificially generated spider so. But a spider doesnt just produce one type of silk there are many all with different special properties. The silk they used to wrap their prey for example has a very smooth surface that makes it hard for germs and fun guy to gain a foothold its like a natural plastic wrap that could have medical applications pushpins ideations i just love the ancient greeks knew that spider silk helped wounds heal that it didnt trigger an immune response. Christie even described it in her miss marple books how spider webs can be used to cover a wound so they heal faster. But if this is half the science is now helping us to understand whats behind the phenomenon. That involves the surface structure of the spider silk thats how an idea was born to apply it to existing implants and equip them with a protective shield. And then they wouldnt be recognized by the bodys Defense System the immune system. With the help of modern three d. Printers the spider silk proteins can be applied to surfaces. In the future scientists want to print parts of organs it could for example help replace down the skin. Into. Your own well innovation is to take things a step further we want to use spider soca scaffolding for instance to replace diseased or damaged skin tissue. To do that we take spider silk and mix it with a patients own cells creating what we call organic ink. Comment and just like ink it can be printed by a printer so the silk in the cells are printed simultaneously. By the silk protects the cells during the printing process and afterwords it provides a framework for them to incorporate into the new environment allowing them to grow into new skin tissue. The gentile strength of the strands that spiders hang from called drag lines are of great interest to developers trying to design High Performance textiles but how much force can drag lines withstand we put it to the test that basket hanging from this toy crane this is spending from a thread made up of forty individual strands of spider so. Hundred grams is no challenge. Even double that weight poses no problem. At three hundred grams the test ends abruptly show. That was just too much for the motor on it. But even after the toys motor gives out the spider still keeps on going up to four hundred grams. And another characteristic makes spiders so the source of interest even though its weather resistant it decomposes quickly and the presence of certain enzymes. Comes in chiding is that its important to remember that were working with a technology we developed just ten years ago spiders about millions of years to do it i believe that were going to solve many more mysteries when it comes to spiders which will in turn lead to many new applications. That some good. When it comes to the amazing abilities of spiders there are so might just be a beginning. Speaking of amazing abilities these social insects also have plenty of. Them humans have been harvesting honey for thousands of years so its somewhat surprising that we know so little about the secret life of bees now a researcher in the german city of board spoke once to change that. This robot is a state of the art Research Tool fitted with six cameras and a range of sensors its able to record the activity of these bees inside their natural habitat. B. Colonies are actually complex social units biologists call super organisms. The robot documents how the bees construct their hive which weather conditions they prefer to fly in and whether they sleep at night the researcher hot not feel up from the university of whats bergan germany has spent months building this high tech beehive he wants to create a live stream so people can watch the honeybee superorganism in action. Its what we hope it will give us deeper insights into b. Colonies than ever before classic research has generally focused on the frame system used by amateur beekeepers at home but were taking a new approach using a larger structure that provides space for the robot to observe the honeycombs inside the hive its the first of its kind its completely innovative and were constantly receiving new data thats never been available before. Which gave. The technology is called smart hoboes which stands for honeybee online studies the system is connected to the internet and can even record the swarm at night using thermal and in parade imaging cameras. The robot also detects light humidity and temperature since the wooden enclosure protects the hype from wind and weather researchers can study the bees without disrupting their natural behavior. Because smart who provides a continuous feed youre not limited by what time of day it is you can log onto our video archive at all hours i do it all the time when i have a spare minute i go to the website on my smartphone and watch the videos. So often on the. Phone. To the scientists surprise the bees set up their hive much faster than expected. And now everyone can watch how they do it. Even here in a cafe in bavaria caught must feel its creating a buzz with the locals. He logs onto the hobos website and shows them the fascinating life of bees. Him on commitment anyone can fight this if eight men and women just young and old and Young Children students the keepers retirees everyone can join a using any device people can access the site with all the videos and data. Anyone can become the researcher so then for sure that. Of course there are also bona fide scientists involved. The bees settled in last july kicking off the Research Project the first results are to be published later this year but until then robot researchers will keep busy measuring weighing counting and most importantly recording the inner workings of the bee world. Lots of helping hands or making the hoboes project a success seems like a pretty effective way to conduct research what do you think about Citizen Science we ask you to tell us on facebook smiling benedict thinks Citizen Science is a brilliant way to participate in Research Projects and expand your horizons. Evans kumi wrote that Citizen Science breaks down preconceptions that science is hard. And that should encourage more women to be active in the field. According to subtle under ya know we first need science communicators to explain science in simple terms that. Anyone can understand. Thanks for your comments. Over millions of years of evolution human beings have perfected the art of walking right. But what other typical physical postures of you are from the philippines wanted to know more. Says he wants to know. Why do people close their legs while sitting down. Well theres no known scientific reason for us to be affected its. Pretty clear. Its a form of body language it says this is comfortable although my legs are crossed im feeling relaxed. Role men tend to splay their legs. Women less so. Some doctors say its a biology you generally have now where hips on their hip joints are shaped differently therefore so the theory its harder for them to cross their legs. That explains why males like to spread race perhaps in the hope of demonstration virility truck to commit to day however displays like these are less acceptable in cities like new york and madrid their peak calls for a bomb on mount spreading and many people say nonsporting is nothing more than macho posturing and kind of body language used to reinforce gender stereotypes of male dominance on female submissiveness. Crossing your legs sends a much more discreet message on his all from labeled a typically feminine pose. We could extend she waits the shape of the body while also preventing untoward glances. By the way the belief that causing your legs is bad for your health is on arbonne myth researchers say doing it doesnt encourage barack has the ins and he more than other positions. Feel free to just relax into it. If you have a science question go to our website and send it in if we answer it on the show youll get our d. V. D. Featuring a lighthearted look at some of albert einsteins most famous ideas. The most important thing is to never stop asking questions. When it comes to psychological disorders sufferers are often susceptible to depression. And while many Mental Illnesses can be traced back to factors like unresolved traumatic experiences a genetic predisposition or brain tumors some researchers now think that at least with certain disorders and unexpected trigger could be at the heart of the problem. You cant see them but they are everywhere. That human body teams with microbes. You know there are ten times the number of pathogens in on and around us as well as there are cells in our bodies you know you go. Around half of us carry the pathogen that causes talk so plants mosis. Viruses tapeworms and many other parasites can also be found in humans to survive and reproduce they need a host or series of posts to complete their lifecycle the disorders parasites cause arent easy to identify they also cause conditions that arent instantly attributable to parasitic infection like auto immune responses that affect the fibroid plant or bowel parasites can even cause Mental Health problems. Serious Mental Illnesses like clinical depression cant just be put down to problems in life. Theyre biological diseases. Or the same goes for psychosis like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Neurologist has spent his career exploring of things he suspects at least thirteen pathogens of playing a role in Mental Health disorders and diseases involving the immune system. As hypothesis has been lent weight by a large scale study from scandinavia involving more than three and a half million subjects. Over time the severe infections and auto immune diseases that bring people to the clinic also increase their likelihood of contracting all kinds of serious mental disorders. A radical thought but many doctors and psychiatrists dont agree they dont believe microorganisms are responsible for psychiatric disorders instead putting them down to factors like stress patients are often told their disease has an unknown origin which isnt much help. You can help the patient much more if you identify the cause which weve done in certain individual cases say struck the caucus bacteria are causing a chronic autoimmune reaction over years Something Like that can lead to clinical depression. It can be a big help venter lemonade the pathogen. If it. Can remain in the body for years if the immune system is weakened that can lead to micro inflammations in the body that can eventually cause full blown auto immune diseases. Such inflammations can also develop in the brain and says that can trigger seeking out. Symptoms like depression or schizophrenia. Psychiatry find a nationally rejected best his theory as well but he had many patients that didnt respond to conventional treatments so phoniness took a chance and tried dosing some of them with cortisone to reduce possible inflammation. Weve now published several cases of patients that dont only have schizophrenia as it was defined twenty years ago but also have depression. After cortisone treatment putting it in simple terms they were healed. And those experiences were very exciting for us in the clinic. With cortisone the psychiatrist managed to help one patient within the space of a week whod been suffering from delirium and hallucinations for seven years. This is a tremendously exciting area of psychiatry right now because this insight opens up completely new horizons in terms of treatment. Patients are often relieved to be given a clinical cause for their condition society is more accepting of disease caused by microorganisms than illness provoked by psychological factors. Conflict do you have any conflicts or not addressing did something bad happen during childhood these are the typical questions that always come up. Why dont we ask is it like flu or an immune response for the patients idea of self that plays an Important Role categorizing where the symptoms came from. The extent to which pathogens actually are responsible for mental disorders isnt yet clarified that will take more research but one thing is clear. For a Certain Group of patients how big we cant say exactly we at least have new potential treatments. We still dont know what causes so why. Range of diseases from schizophrenia and depression to rheumatism and inflammatory bowel disease but at least in some cases it looks like pathogens and parasites could ultimately be responsible. For. Bio diversity comes into its own in the worlds remaining primeval forest its. Research in woodlands like these has long been difficult work. But now theres a more elegant less intrusive method in initial testing its proven effective in an ancient rain forest in Southeast Asia on one of the Worlds Largest diamonds. A nature reserve in the northern part of the island of borneo. Scientists are using this device to measure and map the primeval forest here its a laser scanner that emits light and pulses and records the echoes that bounce back they can be used to produce a spatial image of the area geoscientist bobby on schneider has set up the device. Later back at his office in zurich he analyzes the recordings. And this is an example of a scan we took in the forest you can see the scanners extremely High Resolution you really see every individual leaf and thats necessary if you really want to call it information everything that exists here this is one of the first times weve been able to measure the forest in this way. The real issue is how is it even possible for so many different species of trees to coexist at so many levels and areas in the forest. Before deploying the laser scanner in the jungle of borneo schneider tested it for years back home in a Wooded Mountain range near zero. The scientists combine the readings from the laser on the ground with a laser reading from a plane flying over the same stretch of woodland. The vegetation reflects the light towards its source that echo is used to construct a three dimensional model of the forest that has information about the height of trees and amount of wood in the measured area. And his colleague felix moores dog say the system is more effective than conventional forest inventory methods. With a laser we can cover large regions in a comprehensive way we cant do that with inventories theyre only made up of samples from spot check locations in some cases that causes errors because we have to extrapolate the data. Is a forest engineer hes collected data before with the help of large scale laser scans. This fall there are clearly a quantum leap forward in the field laser data provides a real treasure trove for producing maps that help forest rangers with their daily tasks extensive high quality data is available now for the first time it makes recognizing particular structures in the forest possible such as rejuvenation under large trees layers of moss and dead wood wood the shape of terrain wish yet of course data like that is also useful for conservation. The laser data shows the structure of the forest. But theres even more behind the technology. To help measure biodiversity in a particular area the scientists combine the laser data with another reading taken from the air with whats called a spectrometer. Since the plane isnt pressurized the scientists have to wear oxygen masks while taking the scan. The device measures light reflected back from the forest at different wavelengths that creates a spectral fingerprint of the vegetation when the data is then projected onto a plaster model of the Mountain Range it opens whole new perspectives for research. You can see this ranges very characteristic its completely covered with forest the blue areas stand out those are coniferous trees the green areas are deciduous trees. Schneiders approach and methods were recently published in the renowned scientific journal nature. As fishnet if its acts and its really the first time that a method like this is been used to measure extensively. The same goes for accuracy with it you can see single trees and determine differences in the biochemistry of leaves what the bush team went with until now that wasnt possible for such a large area when youre out in the field you used to have to go to a single tree and take the leaves and measure them but of course you cant examine an entire forest that way for the first time this new method and really allows entire ecosystems to be examined it lets us look at biodiversity over a large area there goals are. If the laser method in borneo stands the test it will soon be deployed to the International Space station where it will be used to measure the biomass of the entire planet. Or more from the world of science and technology go to our web site and write to us on twitter and facebook we love hearing from you. On our next show well head to greenland where Climate Change is melting glaciers as the ice disappears it leaves behind huge amounts of fertile sludge a Research Project is looking for ways to profit from it that and other stories from the world of science next week on tomorrow today see you then. Our. The to. The hunt for the auschwitz angle of death.

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